we change

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We change. 

This is a truism so blatant we could laugh at it,

 if we really believed it. 

We know things change,

 both things as circumstances and things as objects. 

The meadow across from the house where I grew up,

 which seemed like it had been there forever,

 has been filled with houses for forty years. 

To the people living in those homes the meadow, 

the games and egg hunts were never there. 

Only their own memories are there.

 In our heart of hearts,

 however, most of us harbor a deep belief, 

so deep we accept it without thinking,

 that some part of us,

 an essential us, 

remains the same, 

regardless of events or even memories. 

.

It's an illusory belief.

 Is there nothing that holds?

 No. Nothing. 

Nobody. Nada. Nadie.

 Even if we hold what seem to be the same

 feelings and thoughts years later?

 Isn't there something essential in them that holds?

 No.

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~  Terrance Keenan

 from St Nadie In Winter

artwork by the author

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Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.

.

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The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, 

because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and 

start paying attention to the universe. 

Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.

 When you're unhappy, 

you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. 

You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.

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~ Tom Robbins

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There are times when we stop

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We spend most of our time and energy in a kind of horizontal thinking. 
We move along the surface of things going from one quick base to another, 
often with a frenzy that wears us out.

We collect data, things, people, ideas, 'profound experiences',
 never penetrating any of them... 
.

But there are other times. 
There are times when we stop. We sit still. 
We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves or its memory. 
We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper. 

.

~  James Carroll

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a bubble in a stream

A star at dawn,
a bubble in a stream,
a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
a flickering lamp,
a phantom and a dream,
so is the fleeting world.





~ Diamond Sutra


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May the Angel of Awakening stir your heart

May the Angel of Awakening stir your heart
to come alive to the eternal within you,
to all the invitations that quietly surround you.
May the Angel of Healing turn your wounds
into sources of refreshment.
May the Angel of Imagination enable you
to stand on the true thresholds,
at ease with your ambivalence
and drawn in new directions
through the glow of your contradictions.
May the Angel of Compassion open your eyes
to the unseen suffering around you.
May the Angel of Wildness disturb the places
where your life is domesticated and safe,
take you to the territories of true otherness
where all that is awkward in you
can fall into its own rhythm.
May the Angel of Eros introduce you
to the beauty of your senses
to celebrate your inheritance
as a temple of the holy spirit.
May the Angel of Justice disturb you
to take the side of the poor and the wronged.
May the Angel of Encouragement confirm you
in worth and self-respect,
that you may live with the dignity
that presides in your soul.
May the Angel of Death arrive only
when your life is complete
and you have brought every given gift
to the threshold where its infinity can shine.
May all the Angels be your sheltering
and joyful guardians.

~  John O'Donohue

Good fortune and misfortune cause apprehension

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Selflessness

Good fortune and misfortune cause apprehension.

Regard great trouble as you regard your self.

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What is meant by

“Good fortune and misfortune cause apprehension?”

Those with good fortune are apprehensive of their gain.

Those with misfortune are apprehensive of their loss.

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What is meant by

“Regard great trouble as you regard your self?”

Great trouble comes from being selfish.

Being selfless, what trouble is there?

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Therefore those who value the world as themselves

may be entrusted to govern the world.

Those who love the world as themselves

may be entrusted to care for the world.

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~ Tao Te Ching

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only someone who is ready

.

But only someone who is ready for everything, 

who doesn't exclude any experience, 

even the most incomprehensible, 

will live the relationship with another person 

as something alive 

and will himself sound the depths of his own being.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Never seek to tell thy love

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Never seek to tell thy love

Love that never told can be

For the gentle wind does move

Silently invisibly

I told my love I told my love

I told her all my heart

Trembling cold in ghastly fears

Ah she doth depart

Soon as she was gone from me

A traveller came by

Silently invisibly

He took her with a sigh

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~ William Blake

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When Death Comes

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When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purseto buy me,
and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everythingas a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonderi
f I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
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~ Mary Oliver

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here and now

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There is no greater mystery than this, 

that we keep seeking reality though in fact we are reality. 

We think that there is something hiding reality 

and that this must be destroyed before reality is gained. 

How ridiculous! 

A day will dawn when you will laugh at all your past efforts. 

That which will be the day you laugh is also here and now.
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- Ramana Maharshi

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falling

I often dream about falling. 

Such dreams are commonplace to the ambitious or those who climb mountains. 

Lately I dreamed I was clutching at the face of a rock, but it would not hold. 

Gravel gave way, I grasped for a shrub, but it pulled loose, 

and in cold terror I fell into the abyss. 

Suddenly I realized that my fall was relative; 

there was no bottom and no end. 

A feeling of pleasure overcame me.

 I realized that what I embody, the principle of life, 

cannot be destroyed.

 It is written into the cosmic code,

 the order of the universe. 

As I continued to fall in the dark void, 

embraced by the vault of the heavens, 

I sang to the beauty of the stars and made peace with the darkness.

~  Heinz Pagels

kissed me quite insane

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

I lift my lids and all is born again.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,

And arbitrary blackness gallops in:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed

And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:

Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,

But I grow old and I forget your name.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;

At least when spring comes they roar back again.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

~ Sylvia Plath
 from Mad Girl’s Love Song

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the tired wanderer

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the tired wanderer
loses the strength to go on
and in surrendering to hopelessness
is surprised
to finally feel at home

the troubled philosopher
finds nothing to believe in
and in unexpected silence
just smiles
at the still unanswered questions

the saddened lover
faces the loss of illusion once again
and in dying to passion
falls in love
with love itself

~ Nirmala
from: 'Gifts with No Giver'

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burn yourself completely

.

.

In order not to leave any traces, when you do something, 
you should do it with your whole body and mind; 
you should be concentrated on what you do. 
You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. 
You should not be a smoky fire. 
You should burn yourself completely.
 If you do not burn yourself completely, 
a trace of yourself will be left in what you do. 
You will have something remaining which is not completely burned out.


 Zen activity is activity which is completely burned out, 
with nothing remaining but ashes. 
This is the goal of our practice. 
That is what Dogen meant when he said,
 “Ashes do not come back to firewood.”
 Ash is ash. Ash should be completely ash. 
The firewood should be firewood. 
When this kind of activity takes place, 
one activity covers everything.

.

~ Shunryu Suzuki

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.

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As regards the quietude of the sage, he is not

quiet because quietness is said to be good.  He

is quiet because the multitude of things cannot

disturb his quietude.  When water is still, one's

beard and eyebrows are reflected in it.  A skilled

carpenter uses it in a level to obtain measurement.

If still water is so clear, how much more are the

mental faculties!  The mind of a sage is the mirror

of heaven and earth in which all things are reflected.

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~ Chuang-Tzu

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